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RINGO: Colorado athletic department should have always been run as a business

By Kyle Ringo Buffzone.com

Posted:
05/29/2013 10:59:44 PM MDT

Updated:
05/29/2013 11:00:25 PM MDT

Hearing University of Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano say he views the school's athletic department as a business that should be operated as such was almost as big of a surprise Wednesday as hearing DiStefano cut ties with athletic director Mike Bohn a day earlier.

Don't get me wrong. It's refreshing to hear that perspective from someone in DiStefano's position, especially at CU.

There is no debating the matter. College athletic departments at the Division-I level are multi-million dollar businesses and trying to run them with any other mindset is a recipe for failure. I think that is a hard lesson learned here in Boulder in recent years.

But it was odd to hear from DiStefano because the bureaucracy he oversees has been getting in the way of the athletic department for years in tandem with the president's office in Denver. And I'm not buying that is suddenly going to change just because the chancellor seems to be open to the idea of hiring a successful businessman or woman to lead the department in the future.

Here is an example.

A year ago in the spring of 2012, Bohn probably got out in front of his bosses a bit by telling a room full of reporters that he expected to be able to announce a "transformational" facilities project in and around Folsom Field by September, which was roughly six months away at the time.

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When that news hit the streets it generated a lot of excitement among CU fans and boosters who had been waiting for months, years even, for just such an announcement.

But that announcement never materialized in September because all the bigwigs at the university and CU System level hadn't signed off on it yet. It was delayed and delayed and delayed while the school conducted feasibility studies and meetings and reviews and it inched its way through the complexity of the reporting structure.

Finally, in February we heard Bohn and DiStefano brief members of the Board of Regents in Colorado Springs about plans for $170 million in upgrades that will be funded by private donations and television revenue.

The owner or CEO of a business, a role the athletic director fills in the athletic department, wouldn't have had to wade through that morass before coming through on his promise, especially when that promise was simply regarding unveiling plans for a project off in the future.

It was also odd Wednesday listening to the chancellor talk about the big business of college athletics when he was part of the CU administration that fought against that exact perception of college athletics during the recruiting scandal surrounding the CU football program back in 2004 and 2005.

Back then the school wanted more oversight of athletics. It wanted Bohn to help integrate the athletic department more closely into the fabric of the rest of the campus. It later praised him for doing so. Blah, blah, blah.

Eight years later that mentality is suddenly gone.

I get that the leadership has changed over time and people learn from past mistakes. Those are good things in this case, as long as DiStefano follows through on transforming the athletic department into a business-minded enterprise. But I'm also struck by how much time and energy has been wasted these past years by not treating it like a business all along.

Two football coaching staffs, an athletic director and other less prominent CU employees have lost their jobs, in part, because the school didn't get this right sooner.

Make no mistake, I'm not saying Dan Hawkins or Jon Embree or Bohn would still be in their jobs today if the school allowed the athletic department to function more like a business all along. Each of those men made plenty of mistakes along the way that helped seal their fate.

But this much is absolutely true, if CU had followed this course all along, the jobs of those three men and others would have been significantly easier with fewer hurdles to clear to get things done around here.

Now the true test comes. We'll find out in the in the very near future how serious DiStefano is about changing the approach to one that is more business-oriented. How do we know that? Because a big business wouldn't dillydally once it started the ball rolling in this direction.

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